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POST OFFICE

         The Tipton Post Office was established July 23, 1840, with Charles M. Jennings as Postmaster. The money-order system was established in March, 1866. The number of orders issued has now reached the number of 21,353. For the year ending March 1, 1878, the receipts of the Post Office were $2,700, and there were 2,946 orders issued, amounting to $38,000. Orders paid, $14,885.

         Alonzo Shaw is the present Postmaster.

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A VALUABLE AND VOLUMINOUS PRIVATE LIBRARY.

         The following article, published in the Inter Ocean, Chicago, was written by a gentleman who, on a visit to Tipton, called on Judge Wm. H. Tuthill, the widely known historian and antiquarian. As this rare library was of interest to the writer, so is it to every one who appreciates the value of such works as are enumerated in the descriptive article which is appended in full. The people of Tipton and Cedar County may well be proud of this collection. As a source of reference, it is often sought after by lawyers, ministers and almost every other profession of Iowa and some of the adjoining States. The correspondent said:

         I had often heard of “Judge Tuthill’s Library” spoken of as not only being very large and extensive, but selected with much care and taste; and having some curiosity to see it and judge for myself, gladly took the opportunity a few days ago, with his courteous permission, to look over its multifarious contents. I say look over, for it would take weeks, indeed, I might well say months, to examine in detail the vast quantity of literary lore there placed on his shelves.

         It is, without doubt, one of the choicest collection of books owned by any private individual in the State of Iowa, comprising over five thousand volumes in nearly every department of literature, science and art, and must have cost him a large sum of money.

         The Judge is well known as an antiquarian, being an honorary member of most of the Genealogical, Historical and Antiquarian societies of the Eastern States; and among his books will be found some rare specimens of early typography, several of which are about four hundred years old, being published in the same century in which the art of printing was discovered.

         He has also the old Bible brought from England by his ancestor in 1637, a quaint looking old quarto, printed in 1599, before the present “King James’ translation” came into existence. This is the celebrated “Breeches Bible,” so called because in the translation it states that “Adam and Eve took fig leaves and made themselves breeches.”

         The Judge said he had but a small collection of Bibles, only some forty or fifty in seventeen different languages. One in Anglo Saxon seemed to me quite a curiosity, as exhibiting the great change in orthography that has been made in the King’s English. This, I think, was Wickliffe’s translation. Then there was another in Dutch (Holland) brought over, doubtless, by one of the first settlers of New Netherlands, printed in 1584, in the original binding, with a massive brass clasp, a most antique looking affair.

         I observed, also, a copy of the “Year Books,” the oldest printed law book in existence, and very scarce, printed in black letter, by Richard Tothill, in 1568, six large quarto volumes; and, in looking at it, I came to the conclusion that this black letter, which resembles German text, would puzzle most of the modern lawyers to read.

         There are also several of the first editions of some of the early Law Reporters, also printed by Richard Tothill (who, it seems, was an ancestor of the Judge), dating back to the days of Queen Elizabeth. A copy, too, of that rare old book, Grafton’s Chronicle, 1578, said to have been compiled by him during his long imprisonment for publishing an edition of the Bible in English; with many other early printed works, mostly in Latin, from the first printing presses established, in the fifteenth century in Germany, Italy and France, one of which particularly attracted my attention, being a clean, perfect copy of the rare Aldine edition, so highly prized by bibliographers, of a Dictionaricum Groecum, in Gothic and Roman type, with written paginations printed in Venice in 1497. It was indeed a curiosity, a veritable relic of olden times, bound in stamped vellum, with the ancient clasps still attached.

         Among the classics I observed a fine copy of the Drakenborchii edition of Livy, in eight volumes, which Dibdin refers to as “one of the most beautiful and correct editions ever published.” This copy is on large paper, and said to be very valuable.

         The department of Heraldry and Genealogy is very extensive A complete set of all the costly works compiled and edited by J. Bernard Burke, the standard authority of England among which I noted his Royal Families, Peerage and Baronetage, Seats of the Nobility, Dictionary of Arms, etc., etc. Then there was the Calendar of State Papers, a voluminous series, published under the authority of the British Government; Grose’s Antiquities, 8 vols. (the celebrated Capt. Grose mentioned in Burns’ poems); Publications of the Camden Society, 75 vols.; Lyson’s Magna Britannica and Environs, 9 vols. Quarto; Harleian Miscellany, 12 vols.; Lewis’ Topographical dictionary of England, Ireland and Wales, 10 vols.; Nichols’ Collectanea Topograpica et Genealogieca, 8 vols.; Topographer and Genealogist, 3 vols.; Literary Anecdotes, 9 vols.; Literary Illustrations, 6 vols.

         But among all this wealth of books there were none more highly prized by me than the rich and costly Bibliographical works of the renowned Dr. Dibdin, comprising the Bibliographical Decameron, 3 vols.; tour in France and Germany, 3 vols., of which a copy, highly illustrated was sold at the “Rice sale” for $1,920, being the highest price ever paid for a single work in the United States; tour in the Northern Counties, 2 vols.; typographical “Antiquities, 4 vols.; Bibliotheca Spenceriana and Edes Althorpiana, 6 vols.; Cassano’s Collection, 1 vol.; Bibliomania, . .

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. . . Bibliphobia, Library Companion, Introduction to Greek and Latin Classics, 2 vols.; autobiography, 2 vols.

         I saw, also the fac-simile reprint of Caxton’s “Game of ye Chesse,” the first book printed in England, and the zincographic fac-simile got up by Lord Ellesmere of the first edition of Shakespeare, the exceedingly scarce first folio copy, of which one is exhibited in a glass case at the Astor Library in New York, and which is said to be worth $1,000.

         Then there was quite a number of Herald’s Visitations, pretty much all, I believe, that have been printed; and of Heraldic works there were Guillam, Yorke, Wotton, Kent, Robson, Berry and Boutell, with a host of others.

         Then came a large collection of works relating to English county history, among them Blomefield’s History of Norfolk County, 12 vols.; Norfolk Archeology, 6 vols.; Polwhele’s Devonshire; as also Risdon, Westcott and Moore, together with the first, second and third series of Notes and Queries, 36 vols.; Bailey and Britton, 32 vols., etc., etc.

         The Judge seems to have been as assiduous student of our own early Colonial History, for the works on his shelves relating to the early settlements of this country are a legion. To attempt to particularize them would take up too much space and time for a newspaper article; but it would appear that every work that has been published on the subject has been carefully sought out and deposited here. For instance, all that has ever appeared in print relating to the Salem witchcraft mania; the Hutchinson controversy; and, in fact, the same might be said as to almost any other mooted point in the old Colonial times. Then here was the Historical Magazine from the commencement up to the present time; and the Proceedings and Collections of all the Historical Societies in the United States that have issued publications, of which the Massachusetts Historical Society is the most extensive, comprising some forty volumes. Connected with this department is the Genealogical History of the Puritan settlers, a complete library in itself; there was the Historical and Genealogical Register, 25 vols.; Savage, 4 vols.; Farmer, Hinman and others; and scores upon scores of genealogical histories that have been published from time to time of separate individual families, some of them now exceedingly scarce.

         Then, coming down to what may be termed modern publications, I find our standard American authors, Bancroft, Prescott, Motley, Hildreth, Palfrey, etc., in History; and in Poetry, the works of both British and American authors, from Chaucer and Spencer to Bryant and Tennyson, most of them beautifully embellished editions.

         Of the War of the Rebellion, there was the Rebellion Record, 12 vols., handsomely bound in half Turkey morocco, being the copy formerly owned by Mayor Rice, of Chicago; Duyckinck’s History of the War for the Union, and Tomes’ War with the South, each of the two last named works in 3 vols. quarto, and extensively illustrated with engraved portraits, battles, etc.; these, I think, where what are called subscription works, added to which are a dozen or more of others, such as Lossing, Greeley, Pollard, etc.

         Of what are known as privately printed books, I never before knew that so many of that description had come into existence. There was the Munsell Series, Bradford Club publications, Prince Society, Providence Club, Andrews’, Dawson’s Shay’s, Sabin’s and Woodward’s Series, and innumerable others, many of them presentation copies. One of them is worthy of more particular notice. It is the “Diary of Washington from Oct. 1st, 1789, to the 10th of March, 1790,” of which only one hundred copies were printed at the expense of J. Carson Brevoort, Esq., and this particular copy superbly bound in levant morocco was presented to the Sanitary Commission Fair, held at New York, April 5th, 1864, and there publicly sold at an extravagant price.

         In the department of illustrated books, the Judge’s library is decidedly rich. There is Hume’s England, published by Bowyer in the beginning of the present century, in 6 vols. folio, but by far the largest sized folio I ever saw. I think it is called Atlas or Elephant. Then comes Macklin’s Bible, 6 vols. of the same size, of which the engravings alone are said to have cost a fortune. Then there is Knight’s pictorial edition of Shakespeare, 8 vols.; Milton, 2 vols.; Thomson’s Season’s, in large quarto; the Keepsake, 8 vols., large paper; Lodge’s Portraits, the large paper edition; Knight’s Gallery; Hogarth’s Works; Burney’s History of Music; Dore’s Don Quixote; Bartlett’s Scenery, and hundreds of other works, filled with the most exquisite engravings.

         There, too, are the works on chess of Philidor, Sarratt, Lewis, Staunton and others; Chess Player’s Companion, Problems, Tournaments, etc.

         The works of reference alone would fill the shelves of an ordinary library. There were the Encyclopedias from the early ones down to Chamber’s and Appleton’s. The numerous Gazeteers, the Dictionaries and kindred works were almost without number, among which can be particularized Bailey, Ashe, Tooke, Nares, Entick, Pegge, Boyer, Ainsworth, Halliwell, Johnson, Richardson, Worcester and Webster, which last is a truly magnificent copy, in two large folio volumes, being the large paper edition of which it is said there were but two hundred copies printed, and intended for presents.

         In the periodical line, I noticed full files of the Merchants’ Magazine, Putnam’s Atlantic and Harper’s; and in what be term light reading, there were not only the older works of . . .

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. . . LeSage, Fielding, Sterne, Smollett, Richardson, etc., but the later ones of Sir Walter Scott, Bulwer, James Lever, Dumas, Sue, Reade, etc.; and of our own American authors, Washington Irving, J. F. Cooper, J. P. Kennedy, and an almost endless variety of others.

         Then the piles of pamphlets on apparently every subject, of which, to my inexperienced eye, there seemed to be thousands upon thousands, making a perfect mine of printed matter that would gladden the eyes and delight the heart of every true lover of literature.